The search for life

Strange Fruit – Billie Holliday

A stark and poignant reminder of the brutality caused by racial intolerance. With the increase in racial attacks lately, it seems critical that we maintain a vigil against this facet of humanity, whether in this country or abroad.

Seven treesBearin’ strange fruitBlood on the leavesAnd blood at the rootsBlack bodiesSwinging in the southern breezeStrange fruit hangin’From the poplar treesPastoral sceneOf the gallant southThem big bulging eyesAnd the twisted mouthScent of magnoliaClean and freshThen the sudden smellOf burnin’ fleshHere is a fruitFor the crows to pluckFor the rain to gatherFor the wind to suckFor the sun to rotFor the leaves to dropHere isStrange and bitter crop

Sang by Nina Simone

“Strange Fruit” is one of the most haunting melodies and politically correct verses that Billie Holiday ever sung. It was written by Lewis Allan, a poet. But Columbia records, which interestingly had recorded “race music” and racial jokes, refused to deal with Allan’s poignant prose because they didn’t want to offend their Southern white customers by promoting the song’s explicit and vivid exposure of the racist lynchings then rampant in the region.

Lady Day, however, was determined to make a profound statement against lynching by recording the torturous tune. Ignoring Columbia’s advice, she cut a deal with Commodore Records, which first recorded the composition during a 1939 session.

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“Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars – mere globs of gas atoms. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination – stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one – million – year – old light. A vast pattern – of which I am a part… What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?”
-Richard Feynman